Trick or treat?

[schen]

I have been struggling with a fairly difficult one and needed to take a break from it.  So I requested an easier one (so I thought) from Jan's gallery.  The water damages to the dress with hundreds of folds turned out to be the most difficult part.

Please let me know if I missed anything.

[Hannie]

Chen, this one definitely deserves a treat, what an amazing restoration!
Isn't that the cutest sight you've ever seen, what a doll! 
No matter how hard I tried, I couldn't find anything to pick on, the photo looks like it never had any damage, well done.   :wnw:

Hannie

[cmpentecost]

This was one of my favorite photos!  This little girl truly looks like a doll!

It looks great to me Schen!

Christine

[klassylady25]

She really does look like a doll!!  That's an amazing shot and great restore!!   :loveit: How cool!!

[glennab]

Good heavenly days!  I thought this WAS someone's favorite doll when I saw her in the gallery.  (Actually, she probably is – but a real live one!)  What a precious munchkin.

Chen, you did a masterful job on the restoration.  The only thing I'd change is to smooth in the little dark splotch on her right leg (on our left).  Your clean-up of the dress is awesome! KUDOS.

Cheers

Glenna

[jneil2]

Good job, Schen.  That splotch on her leg is probably a bruise from when she fell down tap-dancing, or somethiing. 

Send her home to me!

Jan

[Ratz]

Great job Schen :up: she looks beautiful.

[Tess (Tassie D)]

I thought the same Glenna, it was a doll. What a cutie, great job Schen. :up2:

[Hannie]

Chen, speaking of awesome dress clean ups, how did you do that?  I'm working on a photo of a little girl and her  light blue dress has similar discoloring.  I left that part till last, not quite sure how to make it come out the way you did.  I thought I would clone\heal a little and then paint over it in color or low opacity normal mode, can you explain a little as to what you did?

:loveit:

Hannie

[Ausimax]

 A great restore Chen, I looked at that one in the gallery and wasn't sure it wasn't a doll, the only thing I see is the dark spot on the door frame by her hair looks like damage to me.

Max

[schen]

Thanks for your eyes and complements.  She is really a doll.

The smudge on the door frame by her hair does look like damage and I will remove it.  I am still not sure about the bruise on her right shin.  It could be original but does stick out with the perfect china doll like skin on her face and right arm.  I am thinking about dodging it a little bit as a compromise.

Hannie, I used clone/heal for most of the part but I colored it first.  I like using healing brush because it retains the texture but it tried to blend in with the color/luminosity of the surrounding.  Here is roughly my procedure:

1. duplicated the layer

2. selected the damaged parts of the dress.  This turned out to be easy because of the contrast between them and the lace trim and the intact parts was so great, I used the magic wand to select the lace and intact parts then inverted the selection.

3. sampled the deep blue color of the intact part of the dress and paint over the damaged part of the dress.

4. used color blending mode and merged the duplicated layer down

5. used color balance/level to bring the selected areas closer to the intact areas

6. used clone to stamp out the spots that did not conform well

7. used healing brush and sampled an intact area with similar contour of color/luminosity transition

BTW, I keep a brightness/contrast layer on the very top and work on the layers below and discard it when I save the final image.  It is easier to mend the damages on the darker parts of the image with the brightness turned up and contrast enhanced or with brightness turned down when I am working with the brighter parts of the image.

Boy, this is difficult to describe in words.  I hope I explained it well enough to be understood.  If not, please ask and I will try again.

Sorry for the slow response.  I went to Chicago yesterday to see Lyric Opera singing La bohème.  Last night was the tree lighting ceremony of Michigan Avenue.  The traffic was horrendous but the music and the performance was splendid. 

[Hannie]

Hi Chen,

Thanks a lot for a really great tut on "dress repair".  (you have to be a tailor)  I find it very easy to read and folllow and I will definitely try your method as soon as I get to the dress part of my project.
It is good to read about your selection method, I sometimes forget to use the right tool thus making selecting more difficult than I should.  I particularly like your use of a contrast/brightness layer on top while you're working below that layer.
Please don't apologize because you are anything but slow! 
I hope you enjoyed your night out in Chicago, sounded like fun. Isn't it great to see a beautiful live opera or concert?

:hug:

Hannie

[schen]

Tailor  ???  Are you talking about the person who missed the cue of the overlapping of the boy's jacket?  :-[

It is important to select the areas before using healing brush near contrasting colors.  Without select, the white lace will bleed into the dark blue dress.  I try the magic wand first, magnetic lasso add/subtract second, then manually add/subtract.  Sometimes, selecting the opposite and invert the selection would be easier.

The opera at the Lyric was wonderful.  The traffic was bad.  The tree lighting ceremony attracted a large crowd and the rain did not help.  The dinner did not show up until 40 minutes after ordering and we did not have much time to enjoy it.  But the great performance made up the losses.

[Ausimax]

Schen, if you have any magic tricks to make the healing brush or tool constrained by selections, I would love to hear it. Drives me mad that they both sample outside the selection areas if it is lighter or darker, I usually work as close as I can to the edge then clone to the selection boundary.

The only other way I've found is to copy the selected area and place a layer underneath and fill it with a matching colour.

So if you have any hidden secrets - Fess Up. :knuppel:

Max

[schen]

I am not holding any secrets here.  My experience of healing brush tool with regard to the selection is that the selection only affects the destination not the source.

The healing brush samples inside and outside of the selected areas.  When the brush is applied, only the areas inside the select will change.  Also, the areas outside of the select will not affect the result of the healing.

In the following example, I used healing brush tool to sample the bud on the left (marked by a blue circle) and applied it to the right of the red flower.  In the first figure, nothing was selected.  The blue-green on the upper right of the bud came from the red adjacent to the sampled area.  And the red bled into the upper left of the destination area.

In the second figure, the areas outside of the red flower was selected.  The blue-green stain from the sample area was still there but the red did not bleed into the destination anymore.